Dial 5-1-1 And Hear I-4 Report

Drivers With Cell Phones Will Be Able To Get Updates On Any Delays, Officials Said.

June 22, 2002|By Jim Stratton, Sentinel Staff Writer

You can call for pizza, you can phone in prescriptions and, beginning next week, you can call to find out just how maddening your trip on Interstate 4 will be.

At noon Monday, the state will unveil a traffic-information service that will give cell-phone users regular updates on congestion and tie-ups in the I-4 corridor.

By dialing 5-1-1, drivers will tap into a 24-hour message system that will tell them where traffic is the worst and how long delays will be. Drivers can ask for information about I-4 between Volusia County and Walt Disney World by using their cell phones.

Using speech-recognition technology, the system will select information for the right spot and relay that to the driver. Though all messages are recorded, they're done by real humans, not a computerized voice.

Say "Altamonte Springs," and the voice on the other end of the phone will describe I-4 traffic near State Road 436. Say "the attractions," and the voice will spit out information about the Disney area.

And if the early-morning commute has you a little mush-mouthed, the system will respond: "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

The Orlando system is an early piece of what transportation officials hope will become a national traffic-information system. It will be the first such service in Florida and the sixth in the nation.

The others are in metropolitan Cincinnati, Utah, Virginia, Nebraska and Arizona. Only two of those -- Utah and Virginia -- are voice activated. The others require drivers to punch in codes. The service is an example of what traffic types like to call Intelligent Transportation Systems, or ITS. Rather than building new lanes or roads, ITS tries to expand a road's capacity through technology.

The best-known piece of ITS in Orlando is the E-Pass and SunPass system on area toll roads. Those use a small transponder to move cars through toll plazas without stopping.

The 5-1-1 system here will initially include just the I-4 corridor. Ultimately, it will cover parts of I-95 near Daytona Beach, I-95 near the Bee Line Expressway and State Road 408 through Orlando. Eventually, FDOT wants to make the system accessible via land-line phones. Though the service is cell-phone-only, FDOT would rather motorists dialed before driving.

When the service debuts, it will be available to customers of AT&T, Cingular, Nextel and Sprint. It will work for VoiceStream customers by late July.

Based on the experience of other cities, FDOT officials here estimate the system will get about 5,000 calls a day. Almost 180,000 drivers use I-4 every day. System use will likely spike when problems crop up on I-4, but FDOT says it anticipates no trouble handling a rush of calls.

"The call centers we're using have a lot of capacity," said Anne Brewer, the FDOT engineer overseeing the project. "We'll be able to take whatever surges come along."

The system works by collecting images from 58 cameras mounted above I-4 along a 50-mile stretch between U.S. Highway 192 in Osceola County to Enterprise Road in Volusia County. The system cost $100,000 to set up and costs $400,000 a year to run.

The messages will be updated at least every 20 minutes by an announcer stationed at FDOT's traffic-management center near State Road 436 and State Road 50. Drivers will get reports on general traffic conditions, breakdowns, accidents or other problems.

The system will not typically recommend alternative routes, but FDOT will try to pinpoint trouble so drivers can get off the interstate if they choose.

"The locals know the other routes," Homan said. "This is just another way to let folks know what's going on out there."